


Azof and the Cult of the Scorpion Goddess

by draylon



Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 18:15:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 18,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8543872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draylon/pseuds/draylon
Summary: An Orc named Azof, as a new recruit stationed far from home, discovers that Shelob wasn’t the only out-sized invertebrate hanging about Middle Earth back in the day.





	1. Chapter 1

 

The girl from the temple –

The girl from the temple wasn’t running alongside Azof anymore and that meant the – the _thing_ from the tunnel had probably got her. 

Azof spurred himself on to run, harder.  He’d seen the size of those pincers.  That girl was _gone_.

It was hard going.  The tunnel walls and floors were made of  – a kind of a very sharp material that was once spewed from all out some volcano: Azof didn’t know what you call it, but it cut like _glass_. 

He had the clothes he stood up in but most of his kit and all of his armour and one of his boots were gone.  All of his stuff was back where he’d left it, back by the girl’s bed in the main chamber where they’d been before the _thing_ -

Azof didn’t want to have to think about the main chamber too much.    _Why’d_ he have to go and get himself undressed?  

Sparing a quick glance backwards over his shoulder, Azof saw that the passageway behind him was lit with a faint but growing, bluish phosphorescent light and at that moment the high-pitched chittering buzz that had been filling his head since he before started running escalated sharply and became a painfully acute shriek.  Azof staggered sideways, clasping his hands to his ears – hands that he now noted were also shining slightly in the dark – glowing with that same peculiar colour, a dead-cold eldritch blue.

Even taking into consideration that he was an Orc, Azof wasn’t an especially weak or craven sort, and yet he moaned with a deep thrill of fright when he realized that meant he must have the damned stuff in him, too.    

 


	2. Chapter 2

_In Khand, poxy Khand, there’s nuffink but sand...._

Azof had never enjoyed much in the way of a formal education.  This was something he had in common with most of his contemporaries, learning by doing being much more the Orcish style.  They were in general a pretty hands-on lot.

But even little Orclings have the bare basic life-skills to pick up: key life-skills such as language for example; unquestioning obedience also.  The best way to wield a knife.  Self-reliance, ways of killing, how to come out on top in a ruck and –

Geography.   That was important too, because every Orc had to understand its lowly place in the scheme of things; its utter insignificance when considering the extent of their dark master’s domain.

Orcs weren’t even so much as gnats upon the back of elephants, as microbes living off the parasites of _parasites_ of flies that buzzed around those metaphorical elephants - but the point was well made in any case: his kind were an absolutely inconsequential form of life.

Now he was actually in Khand-poxy-Khand however, Azof was discovering that the various chants he’d had drilled into him by rote weren’t entirely accurate.  Khand for example _did_ have quite a few things in it besides sand.   

There were abundant rocks and venomous plant-life.  Rabid jackals....the occasional camel. 

And at night the arid, hostile landscape would simply come alive with snakes and rats and desert scorpions. 

Shortly after Azof’s company’s arrival, the old Orcish sergeant in charge of their in-country orientation got one of the smaller ones speared on the end of his dirk.   

“Now, see these little bleeders,” he announced, holding the wriggling, sand-coloured specimen up to show them, “all these bloomin’ things want is ter crawl and ‘ide in the dark, squeezin’ themselves inter tight, narrow places.  They’d like _nothing_ bloody better’n to go squirming inter yer nose-‘ole – or right down deep through your lugs –“

“- or up yer bum!” Rugratz, the Orc standing next to Azof sniggered.  Resolutely facing the front, Azof kept his face impassive and shuffled his feet sideways, putting a little bit of distance between them.  He’d not known Rugratz long but it was already clear the fellow was such a prizewinning idiot that when he did fall he was undoubtedly also going to be taking down with him any innocent bystanders foolish enough to have allowed themselves to be tainted by association.

The sergeant stepped up in front of Rugratz and mugged at him, feigning deafness and cupping one hand behind his raggedy ear.  “Didn’t catch that.  Wot’s that you said?”

“Us lot’s come from the land of shadow,” Rugratz swaggered, with a vague wave of his hand that - to Azof’s annoyance - inclusively indicated himself, Azof, and about half of the new Orcish company. “See here Granddad – I reckon you been out ‘ere in Bongo-bongo land* too long if you’ve forgot we got them things in Mordor, too.” 

The older Orc shook his head.  “Nah.  Not like this you ain’t.” 

“Psssh!  They bite c’her, s’only like getting a bee-sting, innit?”

The sergeant shook his head.  “See that?” he said, tilting his blade so that the new recruits could see the oily slick of venom oozing down from the scorpion’s curved tail, “that stuff’ll only send you howling _crazy_ before it drops you down stone dead.”  He handed his knife – very carefully – to Azof.   “’Ere.  Take a look an’ pass it on, there!”

Like a pillock the squaddie on Azof’s other side actually raised his hand then, asking for permission to speak.

This was, however, seemingly the exact right thing to do.  “What’s on yer mind, son?” the sergeant said, regarding him with a benevolent eye.

Goodietwoshoes  cleared his throat nervously.  “I heard - is it true it’s only the little ‘uns you gots to watch out for like?”

“No!” the sergeant cried vehemently.  “It’s bloody all of ‘em ennit!  Big and small!” An’ -”

 “How big do these things get, then?” Azof interrupted.

The sergeant turned slowly back to Azof, fixing him with a baleful, rheumy-eyed stare.  He stood looking him up and down for so long that even the usually, unusually thick-skinned Azof began to feel a slight prickling sense of disconcert.

He found himself pointing at Rugratz and blurted - “we only ‘appen to be in the same company!  I’m not _wiv’_ him or anything, you know.”

“But both of yer fink it’s awright to talk right over me, don’t c’her?” the sergeant replied, “an’ ‘ere you are, neither one wiv’ any clue when it’s best to keep yer bloomin’ trap shut!  S’obvious to me you’ve been cut from the same cloth.”  

“Wanna know how big these blighters get?” he continued softly, “well, I should think sooner or later a choice specimen like you’ll be sure to find they do get a _wee_ bit bigger than this.”  He glowered up and down the line.  “Anyone else got anythink else they can’t wait to ask me?  No?   Now, as I was saying, before chubbychops ‘ere” – that was directed at Azof – “started playing twenty bloomin’ questions, the worst thing ‘bout being bit is that sometimes they creep up on you so quiet and soft, like, you don’t even _realize_ till after it’s happened.  And by that time it’s too late.”

“Brilliant.  So what you expecting us to do about it then, eh?” Narkul muttered, from his place two Orcs down from Azof.   Narkul and Azof were – Azof supposed you’d call it - mates.  Or at least the two of them had kept step, more or less, through all of their long march out of Mordor. 

The sergeant shrugged.  “Check yer boots an’ ‘elmet of a morning f’you take my advice.  Or don’t.  S’all I’m saying.” 

By that time the knife-skewered scorpion had reached the last of the Orcish troops.  The sergeant took his knife back and flicked the scorpion onto the ground.   

“What you gotta keep in mind,” he said, spitting on the writhing insect, “is always to show these bleeders the proper _respect_.”  And with that he trampled it flat. 

 The briefing broke up shortly afterwards.

“Hey, you, greediguts,” the sergeant called after Azof, “and yeah-yeah, bring your pals Arfur’ an’ Martha” – he gestured irritably towards Narkul and Rugratz – “wiv’ you.   You three lucky lads gonna be up first!   ‘Appens I’m in need of some fresh volunteers, tonight.”

“Volunteers?” Rugratz repeated doubtfully.  “For what?”

“Why!” said the sergeant, with a nasty, yellow-toothed grin, “volunteers to guard the citadel, what else!”  

 

 

 

 

*Footnote re. use of the words 'Bongo Bongo Land': UK Independence Party. Another bunch of pillocks whose rampant xenophobia and misplaced nationalism is gonna end up killing us all:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/06/ukip-godfrey-bloom-bongo-bongo-land


	3. Chapter 3

 

“Standing guard on the _shitadel_ , more like,” Narkul grumbled crossly. 

He definitely had a point.  In most of its outward appearances the Blessed Sanctuary of the Shining Queen of Light did leave a bit to be desired.   

The sanctuary was in essence two carved pillars – at some point they had been two very _nicely_ carved pillars – made of a strange greenish stone.  The pillars stood a small distance apart from each other at the base of a mountain, one to each side of a hollowed-out area of rock that, if it had happened to have any kind of aperture in it (which it didn’t), would’ve looked more than in-passingly similar to a gigantic, out-of-proportion, door.

A twisted rawhide string was looped between the two pillars across the top of this door, and tied to it were a number of small crescents of fabric with writing on them in some dark, red-brown fluid  –

(“prayer flags,” as the sergeant had explained to them earlier on; “that’s ’ow these ‘eethans talk to their gods in the desert, don’t’c’her know?”) 

-some of them brightly-patterned and others bleached of all colour with age, which hung down from the cord and flapped sadly in the soft night-time breeze, exactly like clothes on a washing-line.       

That was about it.  

Given the way the citadel looked, perhaps if they’d gone to the effort of really putting some proper thought in, whoever had been in charge of naming it might have come up with a title that was less inappropriately grandiose.  Although - if it comes as any consolation - a median line drawn through the exact centre of the door would point east, directly towards the sunrise on the longest day in midsummer. 

(That might well have been no more than a meaningless coincidence, however.)

 So, the two pillars of the temple stood maybe a hand’s-spans or thereabouts taller than the top of Azof’s head, and as, for a Mordor Uruk, he was of slightly less than average height, this means they were about six-and-a-half feet off the ground.   They were separated by more than four times that distance however, so the width of the door into the mountain (if it was a door) was far greater than its height. 

“Someone’s been pissing in this doorway, the dirty bleeder,” Rugratz was griping.  Unfastening the laces at the top of his breeches, he drew his knobbly, cankerous cock out and let loose his stream, too.

“ _Fackin’ idiot_!” Narkul bellowed, jumping backwards to avoid some of the splashback.  “’Ave a care where you’re pointing that thing, won’t c’her!”

Azof, meanwhile, was examining the carvings on the further-away column.  The surface was pitted and sand-blasted after countless years in the desert and it was difficult for him to make out much of the design.  The stone itself also had a very peculiar quality – it already felt cold, in spite of the lingering heat of the day, and as Azof ran his hand over the faintly incised patterns the texture of the rock seemed to slip and shift right under his fingers so that again, it was impossible to discern any easily-recognizable outline. 

 But, taken together the strange carvings and weird, slippery-textured rock combined to produce an oddly mesmerizing effect.  It put the Orc in mind of black water and - tentacles.  And of many-limbed, segmented bodies, sliding over and over and under each other, endlessly down through the dark. 

Azof was almost unable to look away: found he didn’t want to, and in fact -

A heavy shove on the shoulder from Rugratz broke Azof out of his reverie.

“Oi!  Fat-arse!” he shouted, straight into Azof’s ear.  “You too, Narkul!   Come over ‘ere!  Either a’ you lubbers think they can smell puke?”

 Narkul, who had been squatting down by the track that led to citadel, straightened up, frowning.  “Don’t call the lad fat,” he said evenly.

“No?  Funny you did’n seem so very bovvered when that sergeant said it.  An’ I think ‘ee’s gotta point.  Who’s et’ all the pies, eh, Azzles?”

“That shit-for-brains sergeant’s an idiot.  And so you are, too, if you can’t see he’s up to some funny business - trying to pull the wool over, isn’ ‘ee?”

Azof nodded his agreement.  “Def’nitly.”

“Strewth!” Rugratz exclaimed, slapping his hands on his thighs and staring at Azof with exaggerated surprise.  “’Ear that Nark?  It talks!”   

“I didn’t like that fella,” Azof continued, ignoring him, “an’ I reckon Nark’s right.  I reckon that sergeant’s getting us lot stuck into some –“

“Inter some what?  Do enlighten us, Azof dear,” Rugratz interrupted, putting himself in the other Orc’s space and crowding him in it, “cos’ I could really do wiv’ a laugh.  What flights a’ fancy you been on?  Do tell what you think this funny business might be.”

“Well - I dunno,” Azof subsided.  “But it’s gotta be something – something well dodgy, innit?”

 “He’s not wrong!” Narkul interjected. “Look at this road, for starters!  Anyone can see there’s tons ov’ foot traffic, ‘orses too, goes traipsing up and down here.  An’ all for what?  There’s nothing here.  Ain’t nuffink to see!” 

“Tell ‘im about the numbers, Nark,” Azof said.

“Azof here was talking to this old geezer back ‘ome,” Narkul explained, “Mordor goblin, born an’ bred.  And this feller was a list taker, on account he ‘ad a gimpy leg.  One thing he took records for was the – what’s’it he called it again, Azof?”

“Military manifest.”

“Yeah – _yeah_.  See, according to that - _mainfest_ , them upstairs – I mean the big bosses, ‘uv been sending  upwards of – well, the number what’s in our troop -” he looked towards Azof for clarification -

“Maybe...’bout twenty?  Twenny-five?”

“Well, that many soldiers out the land of shadow, to ‘ere, regular as clockwork, one, sometimes two times a year.”

 “So?  That number don’t exactly come to a lot.”

“Ah, but it’s been going on long enough, ‘asn’it?  ‘Undred years, that goblin told Azof he’d been doing that job.  Two ‘undred an’ _fifty_ , the fella what did it ‘fore that.  An’ all that time these troops is going out, an’ going out.  Orcs go out, an’ they send ‘orses back.  You add it up an’ over time, that _does_ make a lot.”

“’Undreds an’ ‘undreds!” Azof nodded.  

“Yeah?  So how many Orcs been out in Khand you ever met, Rugratz?”

The other Orc shrugged.  “Mordor’s a big enough place innit?”

 “Still, you’d think there oughter be _someone_.  But ‘ave you ever met anyone, ever, who was sent out to Khand – and come back?”    

“Phhht,” Rugratz snorted. “You ‘eard what the sergeant said - don’t touch their ‘orses and ‘ands off the women and you’ll be all right.  Maybe those ovver Orcs didn’ pay attention to his rules an’ got kicked in the ‘ead by one of them fine desert horses, or had their knackers chopped by one a’ those wild brown-skin lads.  Maybe they just legged it out into the sand - ‘oo _cares_?  You two nancies are gettin’ your knickers in a twist over the sum total of bugger all!”

“You don’t think it’s odd the three of us got sent out special to guard this place when there ain’t nuffink here?  You really don’t think that’s a wee bit off?”

“Oo cares?” Rugratz repeated.  “I still say there’s _worse_ jobs.  It’s better than ‘aving to muck out the shit-‘ouse block.  Or them ‘orses’ latrine.  You n’ the lad are just working yourselfs up into a frenzy over nuffink.”  

**

“Ere,” Narkul said, drawing deeply on his roll-up, “have a drag on this.”

Azof took a shallow, doubtful puff of Narkul’s dog-end and then carefully handed it back to him.  Squeezing his eyes shut at the acrid flavour and coughing, he asked -  “wot’cher  got in this one then?”

“Dunno, really.  Got chatting to some geezer in the marketplace.  Owd feller.  Had himself one of them stalls full of fancy glass water-pipes an’ smelly junk an’ what-not.  Told ‘im we was coming up ‘ere tonight an’ then nuffink would do but was all fer giving it me for free.  Feller said it’s ’erbal.  S’posed ter steady the nerves.”

“Hnn.”

He and Azof were crouched down together by the little stick-fire they’d built.  The sun had gone down early behind the mountain and night had fallen quickly.  Out under the vast open sky in the silent, glimmering desert the two Orcs felt exposed and naked and very alone.  

Azof shivered.  “I ain’t never seen so many stars, Nark.  ‘Ave you?”

“Ash clouds a’ soot an’ whatnot in Mordor ‘ides it,” Narkul replied, “but out ‘ere, you c’n see all of it – all the way to – well, ‘oo-ever’s out there, innit?  An’, s’like, they’re lookin’ back at c’her.  Starin’ right back down on yer.  Millions of Eyes, lookin’ down, an’ every one of them _judgin’_ you.”

“Judging yer?” Azof repeated.  

“For what you’ve done and that _._ ”  Narkul took a long drag on his cigarette.  “Don’t c’her think?”

“Oh!  Yeah!  Gives me the willies and then some.”

“Be better after the moon rises.  That won’t be for a while yet, though.  Remember what I taught yer?  What’s it gonna be like tonight then, eh? ” 

After a pause Azof said -“...wanin’ gibbous maybe?”  

Narkul nodded his approval.  Azof started then, as Rugratz belly-flopped down into the sand beside him. 

“’Fraid of the dark is you, Azzles?” Rugratz said.

“That’s right,” Azof replied mildly, getting to his feet.   “I’m a fat twat an’ a coward, Rugratz.  It’s all - everythink’s just as you said.”

“Here,” Narkul exclaimed, “where you off to?”

“Getting wood.  We’re almost out.”

 “Huh!  _Nark’s_ got wood,” Rugratz sneered, jerking his head at the other Orc, “or at least if you asked him, I think ‘ee’d ‘ave a choice piece ‘a wood he’s been keeping nice an’ special for _you_.” 

Azof blinked at the others for a moment in confusion.  Then, on catching the gist of Rugratz’s lewd comment, the colour rose to his face in a blush so heated that it must have been obvious to the others even in spite of the dark, and the swarthy colour of his sun-burned skin.  The young Orc blundered over his feet in his hurry to get away.

Narkul kicked at Rugratz half-heartedly before passing him his cigarette.  “There’s no point embarrassing him.  Why you always on the lad’s case?”

“Huh.  Someone’s gotta teach little runts like that to stand up for themselves.”

Narkul grunted.  “He’s young yet.” 

 “He’s not _that_ young.  It’s not like it were back in our day!  He might not be young but I say he’s a runt an’ a short-arse - and a great big pantywaist.”

“It’s not long since he was conscripted.  All new to him, isn’it?  As well as ‘aving,” Narkul tapped his left temple meaningfully, “you know _– inside_.  It must be well weird if it’s your first time ‘aving – _all that_ goin’ on.  To always be ‘earing – ”

“His Master’s Voice,” Rugratz snorted, warming his hands by the fire.  “Yeah, yeah.  I know.  Strength of it fades wiv’ distance though, don’t c’her find?  I reckon I c’n barely even ‘ear it, all the way out ‘ere.”

“Still there, though, innit?” Narkul said grimly. “Nagging at c’her.  _Draggin’_ at c’her.”

“Oh yeah,” Rugratz grumbled, “it’s ’pain wot’s constant an’ actue.’  Tell me anovver one. ”

“T’is though, isn’it?  Like a – weight.  Draggin,’ an’ draggin’ yer down.”

Rugratz rolled his eyes.  “If you say so.  Whatever.”

“What was _you_ like when you was a new recruit, eh?”

“Ah!  That why you been taking him under yer wing?  Think you can see a little bit of the old Nark in young Azof, can you?” 

Narkul didn’t reply.

“You’re wanting to _put_ a bit of old Nark into our young Azof, I’ll warrant.”  Rugratz puffed out a great lungful of smoke.  “You are, ain’t c’her?  Spin ‘im round so you don’t have ter look at that great gormless mug of his an’ he’s not a bad prospect, though.  You’re not wrong there.” 

Narkul’s lips twisted.  “Sure, an’ he’s got – awful bonny hair.”

“You _seen_ the arse on it?” Rugratz sucked in a long, whistling breath.  “Oooo!  _Very_ nice.”

“Oh yeah.  That is – _well_ compact.  But it’s not that -”

“Must be somethink to do wiv’ his scintillating personality in that case,” Rugratz said dryly.  And then feigning surprise again as Azof sat down by the fire  -  “oh, hullo, Azof.”  He nudged him heavily in the ribs.  “You shouldn’t worry.  We wasn’t talking to you.  We was only talking _about_ yer.  Capiche?”

Azof shook his head, trying to hide his annoyance.  “Lads?  You better come an’ look.  There’s something well weird going on over here.”

**

It was an hour before midnight and the three Orcs stood looking at the aperture that had opened up in the base of the mountain.  The opening, centred directly between the two carved pillars that Azof had been examining earlier, was barely more than a hairline split in the rock when they first came upon it.  But as they watched and waited, the crack seemed to steadily – incredibly - widen and increase; a most uncanny effect, as gradual - and inexorable - as the rising of the moon that was slowly climbing the sky behind them, behind Azof’s shoulder.  

“Still not exactly what you’d call a deep romantic chasm, is it though?” Narkul said, sceptically.

By some unknown mechanism, inexplicable as it was utterly silent - the space in the rock had now extended to become a rectangular passageway, narrow and smooth-sided and black as pitch. 

“It’s beginning to look like a door,” Azof said, running his hand over the side-wall of the passage tentatively.

“Oh, do you reckon?  Go on then,” Rugratz said, kicking him head-over-heels through.  “Get your fat arse in there why don’t’cher, an’ go see if there’s anyone home!”

“If that slides shut on him then how d’you expect he’s going to get out of there?” Narkul snapped, clambering after Azof directly.

Rugratz thought about that for a minute.  “You know, I’m not that bovvered, really,” he called, as he jumped in to follow them. 


	4. Chapter 4

Azof fell through darkness, fell for what seemed to be an inordinately long passage of time.  He landed heavily on hands and knees, gasping and winded, and flailed backwards till his shoulders hit the tunnel wall behind him.  

He was inside the mountain.

Silhouetted against a narrow rectangle of moonlit desert he could still see his companions crouching in the outer doorway, a little way away.  They weren’t far from him and he could see them – could see Narkul’s lips moving and then Rugratz shouting back with some crass comment, but the sound of their voices wasn’t reaching him.  Azof barely had time to register that before first Narkul and then Rugratz came barrelling down the corridor towards him.  They arrived with surprisingly much momentum given the relatively short distance they’d just travelled.  

“’kin’ ‘eck!  How far we facking fall?” Rugratz exclaimed, shaking his head.  

“Did’n look like much of a drop, did it?” Narkul wheezed. 

“Lucky we had somethink soft to land on then, isn’it?” Rugratz said.  “Oi, Azzles!  Fat-twat!  Still alive, are you?”

Azof struggled out from under them, bruised but otherwise unhurt.

Rugratz mimed out a quick, rude gesture - centred on his crotch.  “Whoops-a-daisy!  While you’re down there, son!”

Narkul shoved him aside.  “Would you give it a facking _rest_!”

They were in a round-walled tunnel, more than tall enough to allow Azof and the others to stand upright.  It was made of basalt, with uniformly rocky sides and roof and floor.  The Orcs had no way of knowing it but the mountain had at one time been a volcano, and was riddled with cave-like passages just like the one they were standing in, formed when molten lava from an ancient series of eruptions cooled as it flowed towards the outside air.  

At the near end of this lava tube or tunnel was the entranceway the Orcs had fallen through.  In the other direction the passage stretched away, curving slightly up and to the side, so that whatever was at the other end of it was hidden out of sight.  The rough walls ahead of them were faintly lit by warm, flickering reflections of lamplight or firelight and from round the curve a sweet-scented breeze was blowing steadily into their faces.  Picking themselves up, the three Orcs set off towards it.

Just around the curve in the corridor the tunnel abruptly opened into a large open area – a gigantic, rock-walled cavern that had once formed the hollow heart of the mountain.  This was the largest of a series of lava-chambers that had once held the now-extinct volcano’s reserve of liquid rock.  Past ages ago the ceiling of the cavern had partially collapsed, leaving much of the centre open to the stars and sky.  There were lamps burning in the still-roofed portion, and the space ahead of the Orcs was full of heavy, perfumed smoke that coiled and hugged near to the ground.  The incense-smoke was fragrant and cloying - and also oddly reminiscent of the herbs in the cigarettes that Narkul had had pressed upon him in the marketplace earlier that day.   

The funny-smelling smoke made Azof’s vision swim.  His head was spinning and he shook it irritably, trying to get make sense of a disjointed series of ideas and impressions that were racing through his head: 

He was standing straight and at the same time felt that he was pitching forwards – a subtle, drawing sensation pulling him as if the essential centre of his being was stretching; was being reeled irresistibly outwards, towards – something; out from somewhere in the region of the middle of his forehead.

His consciousness seemed weirdly expanded.  He felt feverish all over, with limbs unendurably thick and heavy - and yet he also floated lightly, his body fragile and insubstantial as a bladder filled with gas.  It was unbearable and yet simultaneously a almost unendurable delight, this sensation Azof had of no longer being correctly connected to his body; at that moment not entirely present in himself.  

Strange knowledge came upon him as he reeled and pitched and floated, and suddenly he knew that they had strayed into a temple; an ancient, sacred sanctuary that was older than the hills.  The temple’s vaulted walls were made of purple-black hued pillars, darkly iridescent as insect wings, that reared their glittering arms up as distant arches, stretching higher than the trees.  They were not forged of metal, these pillars, nor were they grown from wood - or rock; and the sky between their (many-segmented, shining) branches swirled and pulsed in inky blackness that was at the same time rainbow-coloured, devoid of light - and yet also brilliantly back-lit.

Azof was filled with awe. He was faced with a power

Or an ancient entity

A presence – an _ancient_ _primordial_ presence

That was unutterably far beyond his ken and in perfect natural reaction he began to quake with fear.  An ageless sense of terror shook him: a formless fear of dark places, of teeth and claws in the cruel night and at once the Orc fell to his knees and cowered, abasing himself on the smooth, black, shining chamber floor. 

He was kneeling in a single square of glaring light, utterly exposed and surrounded by pitch darkness.  No trace of the other Orcs was with him and yet Azof knew that he –

-was not alone. He could barely see beyond the blinding brightness, but knew with a sense outside his normal senses that seething in and out of focus, just beyond the edge of sight, vague, colossal figures were lurking – ghostly, glossy, multi-legged shapes that lay cramped together in the darkness, waiting, all purposefully waiting -

Quietly, shining in the darkness, he knew that through long ages they’d been waiting.  Always had, and would be waiting, for Azof – or for some creature like him; soft in flesh and warm of breath, for there were ever others willing to stand instead  -

And the sense of disconnect that had jolted him for a moment from his body suddenly released him, taking with it the vaguely-formed conceptions that had threatened to fill his thoughts to breaking, incising them all cleanly – neatly, and perfectly precisely – out of his head. 

**

Azof came to himself standing on the threshold of a rock-walled, smoke-filled chamber breathing incense and strong perfume, with a pounding headache and retaining no memory of what he’d been thinking about less than a minute previously.

What with all the smoke it was difficult for him to make out much of what lay beyond, but at length he was able to focus on the three figures - three robed and human figures - who were approaching out of the gloom.

Azof blinked hard for a moment through the fierce pain in his head.  His thoughts came sluggishly – still did not seem to be entirely his own and he panicked as he tried to remember his training.  As he belatedly fell back into a fighting stance he saw that Narkul and Rugratz had already drawn their swords on either side of him. 

The new people came nearer – nearer, and one of them began to speak.  The Orcs realized then that they were women.  They were desert tribeswomen, of whom their leader was the tallest of the three. 

Slender and stately, she was dressed according to the fashion of her country, wearing many bracelets and bangles on her arms and a colourful, loosely-wrapped costume.  

“If you are hungry,” the tall woman said, “you may eat.” Her voice was highly-accented but she spoke to them in the common tongue.

“And if you’re thirsty,” the second woman continued, “we’ll bring wine for you to drink.”

The third one added -“our honoured visitors are welcome.”

The women held their hands up to the Orcs and began beckoning them forwards, weaving an intricate series of trifold circles in the air.  As Azof and his comrades drew closer, they closed their eyes and repeated the third woman’s chant –

 “You are welcome.  Our guests are welcome.”

“We three are priestesses of the citadel,” the tall woman told them, “and you are most welcome here.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

Seeing that he was faced with three unarmed and apparently defenceless women, Rugratz visibly relaxed.  He stepped out in front of the other Orcs, swaggering, and bared his teeth in an ugly grin.  “Oh-ho!” he said. “So it’s a welcome you wanna offer us, is it?”

Narkul stepped up behind Rugratz and thumped him.  “She just said that, didn’t she?”

Ignoring him, the other Orc went and stood very close to the lead priestess and outright leered at her, looking her up and down.  “But ain’t c’her scared?  Three lone women out ‘ere in this dump in the desert?”

(‘Dump?’ Azof thought to himself vaguely.  Hadn’t he just this minute been standing in a crypt bounded by shining columns of vast, unearthly height?  Hadn’t he not long ago been contemplating his miserable reflection in a depthless vault of polished stone?   What about the terrific sense of awe and distance – nameless dread, formless fear, et cetera? ) 

“This citadel is home to our order,” the tall priestess replied, still quite serene, “and we are not alone.  There are many others like us here.”

“Just a load more frightened women, I’ll warrant,” Rugratz scoffed.  

“But there is no reason for us to fear,” the second-in-command said.  “You three were invited and are most welcome – tonight you are our welcome, honoured guests.”

“The guests are welcome,” the three women chanted in unison.

“All three are welcome,” they went on, and again -

“You three are welcome here.”

Nonplussed, the Orcs exchanged glances with one other.

“If you are hungry,” the first priestess told them, “then you must surely eat.”  She gestured expansively, and the smoke that was in the Orcs’ eyes must have cleared for a moment (or something), because they could now see that she was showing them what appeared to be a fully laden dinner-table away at the far end of the cavern / room.  It was overflowing with fruit, roast spitted meat, cooked grains and all sorts of exotic viands in general. 

Narkul regarded the very generous spread the priestesses had laid on with a suspicious eye.  “Done all of this for us, have you?” he said.  “S’good of you.  ‘Course, I’ve never been one to put much store in all that foreign muck.”

“Then if you’re thirsty,” the second priestess added, “there is wine for you to drink,” and she was now actually holding in her arms an earthenware pitcher full of it.  It was a sizeable vessel, wide and deep, and Azof wondered how it could be that he hadn’t noticed her carrying such a cumbersome object before.

“Drop ‘a the local vintage, is it?” Rugratz said, stepping towards her eagerly, as the woman handed him a brimming mug of red-black coloured liquid.  “Well!  I’m not saying this won’t hit the spot!

“Nah, nah, nah,” Narkul said, collaring him and shaking his head vigorously.  “Rugratz, woss’ wrong wiv you?” And then to the priestesses - “we’re not gonna be falling for this trick!  Think we all come down in the last shower?  We know what carry-on you got for dealing wiv’ thieves, and that, out ‘ere!  We touch any of that lot an’ you’ll call for the guards and ‘ave our hands chopped off or somethink, for sure.”

“I assure you, there are no guards.  This is no trick.”

Narkul drew back in horror.  “The stuff’s poisoned!?”

“It is not.”

He thought about that for a moment.  “Ha!  Then I know how this goes!  We eat even the tiniest _speck_ a’ that lot, an’ ten-to-one we lose track a’ time and end up _h’inadvertently_  finding ourselves imprisoned ‘ere for – well, how long you reckon, Azof?”

The young Orc looked worried.  “Now you’re askin,’ Nark.  Wouldn’t wanna call it – could be anythink between ‘forever’ an’ ‘half a year’.” 

“Yeah.  What he said,” Narkul nodded.  “Is _that_ the way of it?”

The priestess smiled and shook her head.  

“So where’s the catch then?” Narkul said sceptically.  “You’re not telling me you lot ain’t going to want to get paid for all this booze an’ grub an’ whatnot eventually?”

“The only payment we will ever ask would be a fully - voluntary giving,” the tall priestess assured him.

Narul snorted.  “Yeah, _right_.  I’ve ‘eard that one before.  An’ just s’posing we don’t fancy volunteering?”

“Then nothing will be asked of you.”

“Listen, lads, listen,” Rugratz put in eagerly.  “I reckon I’ve twigged what this is all about.  It’s only what’s writ their ‘oly book, is’nit?  Gotta always be hospitable to visitin’ strangers, and that.  Them’s _their_ rules, wot they has to live by.”

“Think so?  What about you, Azof?  Think milady’s being straight wiv’ us?”

 “I dunno, Nark.  Free food and booze on tap seems a bit too good to be true, dunnit?”

Narkul nodded vigorously.  “I’ll say.”

“Then fack the two of you,” Rugratz told him, draining his wineglass, “I’m going to fill me boots!” 

Guided by the tall priestess, he set off towards the waiting feast. 

After a moment’s pause the second priestess smiled seductively, and said -

“There are other pleasures that we may offer you.” 

Narkul blinked at her, mystified.

“You have drunk the milk of poppy?  Tasted the apples of the sun?   All the herbs of truth and of forgetfulness, we have them here – the greatest bounty from which you may choose!” 

Narkul blinked at her, still no less mystified than he had been before.  “Come again?”

“If you wish not food or drink, then there are other diversions we may offer.  Other ways of seeing and for you, in your turn, to be seen.”  From the folds of fabric swathing her arms the woman withdrew a long and richly-carved smoking pipe, the bulbous bowl of which was coated with a tarry-looking, acrid and yet sweet-smelling residue.  She offered the pipe to Narkul, holding it out to him in outstretched hands.    

“Oh, well in that case,” Narkul said, stepping towards her with a wide grin, “since you’ve obviously put in all this effort, thought of everythink so to speak, seems it’d be rude _not_ to take you up on something.  Stands to reason, doesn’it?”  And then calling back over his shoulder – “Azzles?  You coming?  Reckon you’re up for this?”

Azof shifted his weight from foot to foot.  “Erm...I think maybe I’ll stop out here for now, Nark, eh?”  His headache was subsiding, but the inside of his skull felt sore and tender, and just then he wanted nothing more than to be left alone.  Puffing his cheeks out self-consciously he stepped away from the others, doing his best to stroll off in the most nonchalant-seeming manner possible.  When he reached the nearest wall of the chamber he stood there pretending to examine a series of decorations that were cut in low relief into the surface of it.

The third priestess however, had followed him.

“You have a good eye,” she told Azof.  “These carvings are the oldest, the most scared here.  They show the story of the Blessed Queen of Light.”

“They do, do they?  I can’t make head nor tail of it.”

“You would like me to tell you?”

“Well -  go on, then,” Azof said.


	6. Chapter 6

 

“These panels show”  (the priestess told Azof) “that in the evening of the first day, the red sun first saw the shining, silver crescent face of the blessed Queen of Light.  Under the stars of that first night they lay together, side by side in the western sky.  The sun’s essence was strong!  The Queen welcomed him and her body soon quickened with his children – she how grows heavy, round and full?” 

(“Oh yeah?” Azof squinted at the drawings, head tilted to one side.  “It looks like - is it supposed to look like, you know – phases of the moon?”

The girl nodded.  “Yes.”)

They moved onto the next series of images.

“One at a time the blessed Queen birthed them, her shining, scuttling young; one at a time, day upon day until she faded to a shadow of her former crescent self.  Afterwards, exhausted by her labours the Queen closed her many, faceted, shining eyes and laid down her head to rest.”

(“Her ‘many, faceted eyes’?” Azof exclaimed incredulously.  “ _Wot_?  So how many eye’s your Queen of Light got, then?”

The girl shrugged.  “This is the way of the story - our traditional way of telling.”)  

“The Queen” (the young woman continued), “closed her eyes and she slept in blessed slumber for two dark nights.  When he could not find her, the sun grew jealous of her children.  He hunted through the hills and forest till he found her sacred birthing-nest, hidden beneath the roots of a great cedar tree.  Then he crushed the blessed, shining brood.” 

 “When she woke the next night the Queen saw what the sun had done and her rage and grief were terrible to hear.  She ravened through the sacred forest, making the ground shake.  Mighty trees fell before her - the earth was razed in her wake.  The fertile hillsides slipped.  The soil choked and killed the rivers and the salt waves beat high as all was washed down to the sea.” 

“At the end, when the Queen was finished the green hills and sacred forest had gone forever.  The trees were gone.  The green fields would grow grass no more.  The land was rendered to a stony desert and in memory of that first, lost, blessed brood, in her sacred desert the Queen made new and multiplied her little, scuttling children –“

She broke off then, momentarily distracted.  Rugratz, deep in his cups, had started singing a bawdy Orcish drinking-song, the lyrics of which in this starlit, open temple-space sounded even to the perennially slow-on-the-uptake Azof, outrageously profane.

“So that’s what this one’s showing is it?” he asked in a loud voice, primarily to block out the sounds of Rugratz’s off-key caterwauling.  “This’ll be the Queen multiplying her kids, is it?”

“It is,” the third priestess said serenely.

The carvings they’d been looking at were all intricately executed, with no portion of background left undecorated.  Weird enlargements and foreshortenings of the subject material had been included, seemingly with the intention of adding emphasis to key parts of the narrative.  They were so densely-illustrated - and at the same time highly stylized - that it was difficult for Azof to properly determine what much of the material they depicted was actually intended to represent.  Possibly it was on account of the episode with the old Orc sergeant earlier in the day, but now Azof found that something about the (obviously intended to be abstract) images in the final panel of the frieze was putting him in mind of....certain, very specific types of desert wildlife. 

“Here!” he exclaimed, pointing a finger at the panels in his agitation.  “So if these things _here_ and _here_ are supposed the Queen’s children, right, how come they all look just like great big scor –“  

The girl whirled round to face him, staring at him in surprise.  “Did I not say it has been given you to see?  Are they not glorious?”  

“Er…yeah, I s’pose,” Azof said doubtfully.  The scorpions in the pictures looked as big as houses, which didn’t sound particularly ‘glorious’ to him - but maybe that was due to traditional ways of story telling, too.


	7. Chapter 7

 

They’d reached the final panel in the series and with her story told, the third priestess began leading Azof away from the carvings.  He followed her through the main part of the chamber, into one of a series of bowers, or alcoves, or cubicles that lined the side wall there.  The bower was a small space - full of colour, with richly-decorated hangings on the walls and patterned rugs and cushions lining the floor.  The girl lit a candle in a glass-covered shade and sat down gracefully cross-legged.

“Now, as for you,” she said to Azof, “what do you desire?  Should I bring to you desert sweetmeats? Jewelled grains, the fattened ortolan -” 

“Nah,” Azof said, cutting her off and shaking his head.  “Thanks and everything, but I had me bite a’ scran before I come out.”

The priestess regarded him blankly.

“I mean I’m not ‘ungry.  On account I’ve - already et’.”

“Then perhaps a drink of wine –“

“Cheers, thanks - but wiv’ them two on the razzle” – he pointed at Narkul and his lady friend, who were smoking a shared pipe, and then over the distant dinner table on which Rugratz was lying face down, having passed out in between bouts of stuffing his face - “prob’ly best if I try an’ keep a clear head.”

“Milk of the poppy?” the young priestess offered.  “Flower of hemp?”

Azof rocked back and forth on his heels and cleared his throat.  “Maybe bit later on, eh?”

“What is it, then,” the girl said, showing only the slightest touch of irritability, “that for you, at this time, would  be your greatest wish – your one, true desire?”

Azof thought about that for a moment, and shrugged.  What he wanted to do wasn’t a question he tended to get asked, much.  “Well - I dunno,” he said.  “M’not all that fussed, really.  So...so what’s _your_ desire, then?”

“I wish only to be found worthy to serve,” the young priestess said, replying so quickly it was like she’d already had in mind her answer to the question.

“Is that right?  Really?  Us lot don’t _wish_ to serve – we ain’t got no choice. ‘It’s yer lot mate,’ an’ that’s that.’  You could say we was born to it.”

“As was I,” the woman said.  “I have wanted to serve in the Queen of Light’s temple since I was a young girl.”

Azof lowered himself down to the floor and sat beside her.  “And you serve her by...?”

“Chanting.  And prayer.  And, not least, by serving the wishes of Her honoured guests.  Visitors such as yourself.”

“Pull the other one!  You really reckon us lot are ‘honoured guests’?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Well then,” Azof said sceptically, “if it’s serving me wishes you’re after, I wish the two of us could just sit here for a bit – dead comfy cushions, by the way, and maybe –“

“Yes?”

“Maybe we could ‘ave a bit of a chat.”

The girl was perplexed.  “Chat?” she repeated, slowly.

“You know – we could talk about…all sorts of stuff.  Get to know each ovver a bit, couldn’t we?”

“Your wish is only - to talk?”

“Yeah!  Like...you could tell me….what’s your name, an’ that?”

“My name is Yildiz,” the young woman said.

“Ill-deez?”

“Yes.”

They sat together on the nice floor cushions for a minute.

 Azof crossed and uncrossed his legs in front of him and twisted his ankles together and fidgeted.

At length Yidiz added -“it is our word for ‘star’.”

“Oh!  S’triffic.  I’m - Azof.  Azof’s not our word for – anythink special, really.”

Another pained silence stretched between them.  It went on for no small amount of time.

“Ooh.  Ow.” Azof said eventually, digging his fingers into his thigh.  “Huh!  Charley horse.  Better get up an’ stretch me legs.”

Turning his back on the girl Azof completed one or two of circuits of the decorated chamber, limping exaggeratedly on one foot.   It didn’t take him long.  What with all the cushions and bolsters and wall-hangings, there wasn’t a great deal of floor-space.

He was pretending to work an imaginary crick out of his back when all at once Yildiz accosted him.  The girl jumped to her feet, dashing towards him across the room.

“Here!” Azof exclaimed.  “What the –“

Now she was pressing herself to Azof’s side.  As he stood flummoxed, gawping down at her she hiked up on tip-toe and twined her arm around his chest.  When she raised her other hand Azof thought he glimpsed a shining glint of metal – then felt a smart, sharp scratch at the back of his neck.  The girl’s nimble fingers quickly started kneading over the injured place and a strange sensation started to spread outward from it: a feeling of numbness that was also weirdly – buzzing; all in all more than pleasant enough to make Azof forget his initial irritation. 

In her mouth Yidiz was holding some kind of pale-coloured material: a paste.  As she brought her hand round to her lips Azof saw her lick a thick streak of it onto her thumb.  She swallowed the rest, closing her eyes, obviously savouring the sensation, and at the same time went back to massaging more of it into the little wound she’d made between Azof’s shoulder-blades.  The strange stuff felt icy cold, in spite of the warmth of Yildiz’s body.

The young Orc noted all of this with a light-headed and increasingly euphoric sense of distraction.

“Ow!” he exclaimed belatedly, rubbing the sore-spot, but barely minding all the same.

Yildiz skipped sideways, smiling, bringing herself face to face with Azof.   All at once she flung herself forwards, straight into the Orc’s embrace.  Her arms reached around his neck and her leg snaked round his hip till she was clinging to him, legs clasped round his waist; climbing up him as if he was a tree.   

Azof caught her and staggered back a step, thrown off-balance by her weight.  Mentally he cursed his gauntlets and his heavy armour.  He had both his hands on the girl, cupping tight around her arse and her breasts were squashing – right up against! his chest, but through the many layers of leather  and metal he was wearing he wasn’t able to feel her body, much.  Yildiz squeezed closer, still clinging to him. Her fingers went carding through Azof’s hair, playing for a moment with the pointed tip of his left ear  – the Orc’s knees buckled slightly at the sweet, unexpected sensation -   

 “ _Ooooo_!”  Azof gasped. “Blimey, Yildiz, hold on a minute, crikey – “

He scrabbled at himself, trying to remove at least one of his gloves while simultaneously doing his best not to drop her – and it was difficult, the way she was wriggling herself all over him.  With one hand free at last he clutched her as best he could as she squirmed deliberately against his midriff, pushing the V of her body downwards, bumping and rocking against his hips.  He was finally, _finally_ working his bare hand through the neckline of her dress - had only just managed to get his fingers round a softly squashy handful of breast and then it all became too much for him –

“Hnh!  Guh- _urgh_!” Azof choked out a harsh, stuttering exclamation at the point of his climax as, with Yildiz still in his arms he collapsed to his knees, utterly caught short.

He was young, and his prick had gone hard pretty much the instant she’d started touching him.  It was all too much and Azof was young, so chances are his prick would’ve been standing up hard even in the absence of any additional attention.  But his senses had been full to the point of distraction, the feel of the soft, warm, weight of her in his arms, the sensation of Yildiz’s hands all over him and the scent of her silk-smooth skin.  And then – then, when she’d wrapped herself round him, she’d been _that close_ to him….Azof’s breath caught as he thought about how he’d even got to put his hand on, on one of her _boobs_ , right there –

Azof snorted and quivered, shivering in his now slightly-more-revolting underclothes, feeling almost overcome, once again – but this time with utter mortification.  Nevermind he’d finished before he even got started and that it had all been over much too quickly.  Now even worse: what must Yildiz be thinking?

Face flooded with heat, Azof set the girl down.  He hung his head, trying to hide his embarrassment.

“Yeah, that were –“ he began, rubbing at himself absently.  “Not that I’m – I mean, I don’t….” his voice trailed off and he had to start again.  “Thing is Yildiz, I gotta tell you, things like this don’t usually, well…. _’appen_ ….”

He struggled on for a moment making his feeble excuses, trying to explain himself to Yildliz; Yildiz, who against all expectations was now regarding him with a good deal more interest than before. 

“This is your first time?” she said. “Your first time with a woman?”

Azof bared his teeth in a sickly grin.  “First time I’ve even _seen_ a woman.  An ‘uman one, I mean.”

“But you have lain with a woman of your own kind before?”

’Course I ‘ave, yeah!” Azof nodded suavely.  “One time this girl, right?  Said she was gonna let me put it in – an’ I nearly did, a little bit!  Turns out she was only, well, only ‘ _olding_ it, up top between her legs, but –“

Yildiz frowned.  “What are you talking about?”

“I suppose I mean -” Azof heard himself speaking, with every word making things worse, and wanted to stop yet for some reason simply could not manage to rein himself in.   “I suppose I might not’ve done it, exactly.”

 “’Not exactly’?” the girl seemed affronted.  “You can either say you have or you haven’t, I think.”   

Azof shuffled his feet, wondering why he’d allowed his mouth to run away with him, wondering why, even now, he was unable to tell an untruth.  “Well then.  I suppose I ain’t.”

“This is a pity,” Yildiz said.  She looked him up and down intently, head tilted on one side. 

For some reason the girl had taken it into her head to come to stand in front of him – much too close in front of him – again. 

“Here…..Azof,” Yildiz said, pausing for a moment, almost as if it had been a struggle for her to remember his name.  “Come here.”  She took hold of his hand and guided it up and under her clothes until it was resting lightly on her chest.  “You would like to take off your other glove?”

The young Orc didn’t need telling twice.  Grinning wide, he stripped his hand bare with his teeth.

“Now, your shoes.”

It was tricky, getting them unfastened, but there was no way he was willingly taking his left hand off her tit, and after an interval of unseemly contortion he managed to kick his boots free.  One fell at his feet; the other went skittering off across the floor – Azof didn’t see where.  He didn’t bother looking.

“This.  It is too much, I think?” Yildiz suggested, so his leather surcoat and few pieces of plate armour also went, until the Orc was left in nothing but his undershirt and breeches.  Yildiz had him remove the rest of his clothing in short order.  Then, taking him by the hand, she led him back to the cushions on the other side of the chamber.  She sat down cross-legged and pulled him along after.

Feeling terribly awkward in his nakedness Azof crouched beside the girl, fingers fidgeting with the tasselled end of the tie on her gown.  

“So, er, Yildiz,” he began, “now you c’n see the goods.  Got a good eyeful, haven’t you?”

The girl nodded, not comprehending.

Azof grimaced.  Quite unconsciously he straightened his back, raised his chin on his rather short neck, and tried to square his shoulders a bit.  “So?  Well - go on, then!  …..what’c’her think.”

“Oh.”  Yildiz looked the stocky young Orc up and down, taking in his swarthy skin, tangled shock of dark, reddish hair, and then the breadth of his chest.  Azof’s looks mightn’t have been much to write home about but he was brawny and broad and had a muscular physique, and was certainly built to impress.  His appearance was quite beside the point from Yildiz’s perspective however, and she shrugged.  “No doubt you represent a most excellent example of your type.”

Blinking with pleasure, Azof beamed back at her.  “You think so, do you?  Really?  Yeah?”

“…yeah?” Yildiz echoed, nonplussed.

“I wondered for a minute!  If – well, if maybe you thought that.”

“Did you?” 

“Yeah!  ‘Cause of the way you was – well, how you was all over me before.”

“Oh.  That,” Yildiz replied.

“But then I thought it must be just ‘cause of you was high, or something, ‘cause you’re a pretty girl, _lovely_ really, and I - ”

Yildiz brushed aside the clumsy attempt at a compliment.  “What means ‘high’?”

“High?  Oh, I mean like – high, on drugs.  On that cold stuff you stuck my neck wiv’.  I fink it’s – it must be making me extra talkative, too.”

“It can do that, and other things,” Yildiz confirmed.

“An’ I really wish I could shut up, Yildiz.  Cause you’re gonna think I’m such a pratt -”

“It is a lot of talking,” the girl agreed.  Lying back she untied the strings that held her wrapper closed and unfastened the front of her dress, letting it fall loosely open.  “There is time,” she said.  “Azof.  Come here.”

A pained expression crossed the young Orc’s face.  “No, no, see - I shot me load earlier, remember?  When I come in me pants.  Means I can’t – _do_ anything for yer just yet, Yildiz - ”

“You can, if nothing else, look.  Did you not say you have not looked upon a woman before?”

“Well _yeah_ , but –“

“And you can talk.  You like to talk, I think.  Tell me about your Orcish girl.  Was she your sweetheart?”

“Me – me what?” Azof broke off with a self-conscious laugh.  “Oh!  No - no, it wasn’t nuffink like that.  She never liked me all that much, not really.  Had me grog ration off me on a promise and then told me to shove it – pulled me cock right out and wouldn’t even let me finish.  Went running off wiv’ some ovver poor tosser an’ that’s the last I seen of her.”  The young Orc thought for a minute.  “I suppose she must’ve been a prozzie, really.  I s’pose that’s the only reason she went with me - ‘cause of she was on the game.” 

“’Prozzie’?” Yildiz repeated doubtfully.  “What is ‘prozzie’?”

“It means....she’d go wiv’ men – for money and that.”

“I know of this,” Yildiz nodded.  “Sometimes, at the especial time of year, the priestesses of our temple make this kind of ritual too.”

“Ritual?” Azof said, raising a sceptical eyebrow.  “I don’t fink I’ve ‘eard it called _that_ before!”

“No?  But these rituals we make are part of sacred rite!”

“Nah, they can’t be,” Azof scoffed.  “Not _sacred_!  ’Cause it’s dirty, innit?  Guddling about in – _you know_.  In women’s bits.  S’a well-known fact.  Everyone says.”

Now Yildiz was outraged.  “ _Who_ would say this?”

 Azof considered this, scratching his head.  “Well, I s’pose the Tarks and all them say.”

“Tarks!” Yildiz said, with some disain.  “Tchah!  What do the men of the north know.”

“Well?  Some of them lot’s....scholars, dead learned an’ everythink, so I s’pose they’re the ones _should_ know.  Like – “he thought for a moment.   “Like when they say us lot are vile an’ scum and you know deep down that they’re not wrong.  But women’s bits?  Oh no!  They don’t think too much of women’s bits neither.  You know what?  Straight up.  Their word for women’s bits is the dirtiest fing there is.”

“And you think this too?” 

“Me?  No, well, I ain’t a Tark so I ain’t got _nuffink_ against prozzies,” Azof assured her quickly.  “Or... or women’s bits.  Fact is, I’d - love to have a go, guddling about wiv’ women’s bits.  I would, really!  It’s just I ain’t never had a proper chance, ‘ave I?”

Yildiz regarded him with angry, narrowed eyes.  “Then prove it.”

“You what?”

“Prove yourself,” Yildiz said.  “Prove to me you are no liar.”

Azof stared at her, shaking his head, bewildered.  “Eh?”

******

It had to about the best thing ever Azof thought faintly, his face buried between Yildiz’s legs as she – more or less, after a fashion – showed him what he should do.   It was the best thing ever, and he’d never even wondered about the kind of things girls might like to do.

The way she had him, pinned down; weight bearing down on him on one side, her smooth golden thigh splayed out on the other - he couldn’t move much. 

Didn’t matter. 

It didn’t matter because Azof was exactly where he wanted to be.  He was as aroused as he’d ever been, which was – bonkers to think about really, because no-one was even _thinking_ about touching his dick – his dick which was still, to put things euphemistically, out of the game.  Waiting on the side-lines, having itself a nice little rest.  No, Azof’s dick wasn’t part of the process.  This stuff – the fun stuff?  It was bonkers, because the fun stuff was all going on entirely inside his head.

New vistas of understanding had started opening up for the young Orc – quite rapidly – from the moment that Yildiz, basically, jumped him.  The mysteries of the female orgasm for example: admittedly a subject that hadn’t carried the barest sniff of mystery for Azof before, as he had not previously been aware that the female orgasm existed.

(And why would he?  He was young; he was inexperienced; and he was an Orc - and moreover his meagre score of past sexual encounters had all been, in essence, transactions)

But now – now, Azof was beginning to catch on.  Yildiz was clearly getting something – getting off on? – the stuff she was doing to him, and that meant….that meant Azof realized, thinking furiously that perhaps girl + adequately applied touch + pressure, could possibly =

Was that daft?  Could girls maybe come off too?  Azof felt dizzy at the thought of it.   

Cause - yeah.  _Definitely_ she was getting off on it.  Had to be!  Even if it was – kind of weird, the way she was carrying on wiv’ all her - writhings and contortions, right on top of him.  Right in his _face_.  Yeah, it was nice, if a little weird.  Azof felt...reasonably sure.

It might have been even….. _more nice_ if he’d played a greater part in it, Azof considered – but not for some time afterwards; perhaps it would have been more nice if Yildiz had spoken to or even looked at him while they were about it; but in the moment he found he had absolutely no complaints.

In the moment Yildiz used him mercilessly, hands twisted to the point of pain in his hair so as to completely control and direct the movements of his head.  At first he tried with his tongue and his fingers to please her, but to little avail because as soon as he started she cut off his air – and relented only when he began slackening against her, mere moments before he was in real danger of passing out.  After that he just stayed where he was on his back, hands fisted in the cushions down by his sides. 

Azof knew he was only along for the ride, so he let her do as she pleased – and she ground herself onto him, rubbing the opening of her sex against his lips, demanding the inside of his mouth - even pressing herself, repeatedly, onto the tip of his nose.   By this time Azof was beside himself, he didn’t care – the smell and the taste of the girl’s sex, the closeness of her; so much had Yildiz’s singlemindedness aroused him that he hadn’t, as their situation progressed, much of a coherent thought left in his head.

So the young Orc lay there as the girl used him to take her pleasure.  Her orgasms came once -  twice -  then three times; at first a series of little fluttering climaxes, squeezed against Azof’s growling, panting mouth.  Before the final one she dragged the young Orc’s hand up from his side, prised two of his fingers straight and pushed them into her body, positioning them – just so.  She moved up and down on them, still with her iron-tight grip on Azof’s wrist, squeezing his hand and his face with her thighs and throughout all of it his only thought was that it was – lovely, what she was doing to him.      

Fingers weren’t the same as his dick but at least it was something.  At least now he had somewhat of a better idea what the inside of her felt like.  Maybe, Azof thought, maybe he could think about it later.  He could take himself in his hand and remember the kind of noises the girl was making, could try to think about what it would be like to have Yildiz’s soft wet heat enfolding him, around him, and then he would…..he would…..

Azof fervently wished he had a better imagination.

The girl’s final orgasm took longer, went on for longer, too.  Azof strained up towards her, the muscles in his back and neck and shoulders wrenching and popping as she bore down with all her weight on him and he strove back towards her with all his might, straining and stretching and stretching till his breath gave out and he was seeing stars, and then at last, at long last she was done with him.    

Yildiz relented and slid off him.   She smiled at the young Orc briefly and rolled over, turning her back on him.  Then she promptly went to sleep.

She hadn’t exactly issued an invitation, but neither had she instructed Azof to leave.  After a moment the Orc took a chance and shuffled closer.  He fitted his body so that it was almost lying against hers, going very carefully, until he was but a hairsbreadth from touching the curve of Yildiz’s spine.     

Yildiz grunted in her sleep.  Reaching behind her back she took hold of Azof’s arm and moved it so it was draped across her hip.

Encouraged, Azof pressed closer, nuzzling his face into the nape of the girl’s neck and snuffling her hair.

Yildliz twitched away from him, irritably.  “Go to sleep, Azof.”

“I will in a minute,” the young Orc said.

   


	8. Chapter 8

 

The deep notes of a ringing temple bell roused them.

Azof woke with his head on Yildiz’s shoulder and one hand still in her lap.  He was a little sore and aching in places following their earlier exertions, but still felt - mainly euphoric about what she’d done to him.  Really, he’d never in his wildest dreams imagined what doing that – with a girl - could be like –

Moving Yildiz round to face him, he cocked an eyebrow at her in what he dearly hoped would be a winning manner.  “Yildiz,” he said, “Yildiz.  You wanna do that again?”

“No.  We must go,” the young priestess said, regarding him for a fleeting moment with a strange expression, almost of regret.  “It is time.”

She took Azof by the hand and led him – quietly, willingly – out of her bower and into the main chamber.  A peculiar ground-mist was rising there, strange to think of in the arid desert heat.  It smelled of old water and dead places, carrying an odd, evocative and maddening aroma.  

Narkul and Rugratz were already in the centre of the open space, bounded by the mist, lined up side by side, shining there –

Azof shook his head, trying to clear a strange hissing sensation from his ears as he hurried towards them, hopping on one leg awkwardly.  He’d had time to sling on his singlet and leggings, but could find only one of his shoes. 

“Narkul!” he exclaimed in consternation. “Oi, Nark mate, what’c’her think you’re doing stood out ‘ere, eh?”  Narkul, however, didn’t reply.  Azof elbowed him.  Still nothing.  Narkul just kept staring into the distance, grinning faintly, smiling and looking out at nothing very much at all.  “Narkul!” Azof insisted.  “Woss’ wrong?”

Rugratz was just the same.  On his feet, smiling, yet completely out of it - it was uncanny!  Azof shook him.  “Wake up, Rugratz!” he pleaded, having to raise his voice because the hissing, or chittering noise that he was hearing was making it increasingly difficult for him to think.  “Rugratz!” he fell back from the other Orc, staring at him and feeling gobsmacked.  “How come you –  how come you’re glowing in the dark, mate?”

It was true.  At first it had been difficult to be certain in the moonlight - but the longer he looked at them, the more clearly Azof could see that his companions two were limned all over – they were painted head to foot - with a steady, blue-white coloured, shining light.  The effect was most noticeable on their hands and faces, on the exposed areas of their skin – and although, like Azof, they had at some stage in the evening both removed their armour and partially undressed, their hair and the boots and clothes they still had on them were also faintly-lit.

Azof squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed them, trying to dispel the queer optical effect.  It made no difference.  When he opened his eyes again he could still see Rugratz and Narkul surrounded by their strangely shining haloes, glowing, if anything more strongly than before.     

Out of the rising ground-mist the priestesses of the temple now came marching slowly into the centre of the chamber, walking one behind the other in a line.  They took up what seemed to be previously allotted places, one in front of each of the Orcs, and waited, bathed in moonlight, heads flung back and arms outstretched.  All three of them were quite naked and they stood silent, bodies shining in the mist and moonlight, too.    

“Yildiz!” said Azof, appealing to a familiar face.  “What’s all this?  What the heck?”

“It is time,” Yildiz said.  “Time for you to take your most fortunate, happiest of places!”

“Me _what_?”

The high priestess, the tallest one, turned to him.  “Have your wishes not been satisfied?”

Azof cast about in confusion, unnerved by the way they were all standing, shining there. “Well, I wouldn’t say ‘satisfied’ _exactly_ –“

“For it is our task to prepare the initiates,” the second priestess said.  “They feast!”

“Gladly they drink the sacred Mother’s wine,” Yildiz put in.

“Infused with her essence of forgetfulness –“ now the priestesses were speaking in turns, by rote -

“And we satiate and send them.”

“We send them blessed to her bower.”

“Shining to her bower!  Joyful!  And the Queen of Light receives them!”

“The chosen ones.”

“The fortunates!”

“The shining, blessed three.”

“You see?”  Yildiz cried ecstatically, “there is nothing for you to fear!”

“You reckon?” Azof said, taking a quick look over his shoulder, scanning possible exits for a way out.   “And, erm, once you’ve sent these fortunate folk off to your Queen.  So – so what’s she got in store for them, then?”

Yildiz met his gaze with a chillingly cheerful expression.  “Behold!”

“ _F-u-c-c-k-k-k!_ ”  Azof yelled aloud then, as he saw - let out a high-pitched shriek of terror -

For then from out of the shadows, creeping through the open tunnel-mouth on the far side of the chamber there came crawling a most fearsome and gigantic creature.  Half-hidden in the rising fog Azof  saw the glossy, segmented carapace – its pair of outsized, wicked pincers, each as long as he was tall; the recurved sting and poison-barb at the end of its tail.  

The thing was a giant scorpion – an enormous scorpion that stood taller than a horse.   The breath of its body was three times Azof’s height at least and nearly the same again, taken from front to the back of it.

Azof stood rooted with fear as the creature – moving with awful, unnatural speed – surged across the chamber, scuttling forwards on horrible, many-jointed legs until he was sure he’d be mown down in its onward rush - but it stopped suddenly and reared up on its back sets of feet, champing its jaws and rattling its pincers.  It stopped its charge just short of the three priestesses and stood before them, a pale sheen of moonlight glittering on its rows and rows of shining, many-faceted eyes.

The three women turned joyfully to meet it.

“Our Queen has come,” the high priestess cried, her voice pitched high and clear in ecstasy.

“The shining Queen of Light.”

“She has come to welcome her blessed three!”

At that moment the priestesses, waiting with arms upraised to greet their goddess, were standing directly between the scorpion and the Orcs. 

“Narkul!  Rugratz!” Azof yelled, grabbing them.  “ _Come on_!”

He dragged at his companions, but couldn’t make them budge an inch.

Poor Azof didn’t have a chance.  As he tried to dodge and run the scorpion leapt up off the ground, clearing the heads of the waiting priestesses with one easy bound.  Azof had only a split second to register the impact as it landed – the shock reverberating through the soles of his feet - before it was grasping him with one of its pincers around his shin and ankles and then jerked him backwards, plucking him clean off his feet.  The forelimb that had hold of him yanked Azof upwards and carried on its arc of movement unchecked, swinging the struggling Orc into the air with fearful speed.  He hung head-downwards for only an instant before the opposite pincer snapped shut with bruising force across his upper body, pinning him by the shoulder, neck and left forearm.   

He scrabbled with his free hand at the carapace, breaking his claws and ripping his fingers bloody on the ridged, unyielding surface, but it responded to his frantic, terrified efforts – not at all.  The pair of pincers held the young Orc fast and began deftly manoeuvring him, twisting his body painfully as it brought his head and shoulders close, then closer to the gigantic creature’s face.  He sobbed and squirmed and shouted as it held him face-down, outstretched, and all the while the scorpion was regarding him intently, looking with an awful, ancient kind of understanding deep into his eyes.   

Azof yelled again as a terrible, alien sense of – _knowing_ came upon him; the same terrifying sense of ancient age and, measured against it his own inconsequence that he’d experienced earlier, on first entering the citadel.  He tried to close his eyes against weird thoughts of being outside himself that went crashing through his head – but, hopelessly outmatched, could barely bring himself to look away.   

So he knew – because the Queen knew – when she had him fast and it was easy; because the foolish ones like him always yielded so very easily -

Then the scorpion’s curved tail lashed down and scored an agonizing furrow across the young Orc’s shoulders.  There was scorching pain, but Azof barely felt it.  His eyes rolled back in his head and he knew no more.

Pale, thick, beads of venom oozed from the poison-barb tip of the scorpion’s tail, dripping down and splashing straight into the open wound on Azof’s back.  On making contact with the Orc’s body the stuff seeped and ran like quicksilver, spreading from its source, till it painted the tail-end  of the scorpion – then her back and claws and pincers  – with a stain of glowing fluid that burned bright white-blue.

Shining and dreadful in the dark the Queen of Light raised her chosen, blessed fortunate in her claws, and bore Azof out of the sacrificial chamber and further into the maze of tunnels that riddled the mountain.


	9. Chapter 9

 

A rush of heat pooled low down in Azof’s belly.  Arousal flooded through him as his cock jerked itself upright and a series of thoughts and images – not entirely of his own devising – flickered through his head. 

He wondered where he was, before realizing - that wasn’t important.  Not important ‘cause it was – dead good, where he was (wherever he was) - to be lying here like this.

Euphoric.  That was the fancy word for what they called it.  It was brilliant, being here, without a care in the word, and he felt – bloody _euphoric_.

For a time Azof drifted.  He felt…sore all over, but it was a _good_ kind of sore – like his muscles had had a decent work-out, the proper way to feel at the end of a job well done.

‘A job well done?’ Azof thought distantly.  Since being conscripted he’d been landed with all manner of demeaning and mind-numbingly crappy work-details but couldn’t at the end of any of them say he ever felt any sense of satisfaction, exactly -

But!  There was no need for him to think about that.

He was sore all over but for some reason he was also really, really turned on.

Next he saw himself and Yildiz lying together, their young bodies joined. 

That was kind of weird ‘cause he was lying right on top of her, and it was – like an odd perspective thing wasn’t it?  For him to be looking down on himself like this and seeing…..seeing the back of his head.  Lawks, he did have a short neck didn’t he?  Now he could see what them other ones were always on at him about.   He didn’t really have much of a neck to speak of, did he?  And, and, that was a well nasty cut he had – deep and bleeding and it went right across his back.  That looked proper painful.  Azof wondered where he’d gotten it from. 

But never mind that anyway because –

Blow me if that mouthy bastard Rugratz wasn’t right after all because from this angle – Azof thought he might be kind of looking like he was developing _love-handles_ …. 

It wasn’t – _helpful_ this, all this continually getting side-tracked.  It’d be better if he’d just give in to it, Azof thought (someone thought).  Now he could feel the sublime warmth of Yildiz all around him – it could be like this always, those thoughts that weren’t entirely Azof’s own thoughts said.  She’d be soft and warm and yielding, and they’d stay like this forever: her wanting him, forever wrapped tight around his cock.  Now he saw that they were rutting hard together, his prick sunk deep in Yildiz to its root -  

Fitfully, Azof shook his head.  Now, that definitely weren’t right.  Yildiz, for starters, didn’t want Azof or yield for him so much as she…found him to be a right pain in the backside, to be honest.  Azof knew from the way she looked at him.  He could tell she reckoned he was a bit thick.

And as for him and Yildiz?  He’d know for _definite_ if they’d done that.

Details didn’t matter.  The though came to Azof that he would be better giving into it –

Details?  Azof thought.  His first time with a lay-dee?  That was hardly what he’d count as a detail that didn’t matter -

His guts twisted and all at once the sensation in his lower regions heightened to the point of pain, which increased, and increased in intensity until Azof’s body seized and convulsed, his spine arching back and his hips bucking feebly.  Under its continuing onslaught the unfortunate Orc groaned, vomited, wet himself and shot his load into his pants painfully – and all at once.  Afterwards he rolled onto his side, shivering and quaking in a pool of warm urine and acrid puke and come. 

Ghastly as his situation was, worse was yet was in store for him.

Azof was lying on a low platform made of stone.  He rolled further – slipped in his own body-fluids, skidded off the narrow surface and went crashing to the floor, banging his head. 

On similar slabs to the right and left of him were reposing Rugratz and Narkul, fast asleep and, from the occasional grunts of pleasure they were making, apparently enjoying it.  Azof’s vision swam - he blinked bleary eyes; the two Orcs seemed to be covered with a number of slowly moving, gently glowing discs.  Through their clothes Azof could see the discs shifting lazily and changing place -   

As his eyesight cleared and the scene before him resolved itself in focus he realized that the glowing things he could see moving over his companions were living creatures: they were immature scorpions, scorpions the size of dinner plates.

He had the awful things on him, too.  The heads and forelimbs were clawed and chitinous, as was the tail that at this stage was represented by only a tiny, barbed nub, but their bodies were grey and leathery-textured - tick-like - shaped like loose, sagging sacs. Bags for blood that were slowly filling with his – with Azof’s blood, the young Orc realized, as a fresh shiver of revulsion thrilled through him.

There was barely any pain from the places they were attached, but two of them were hanging onto his arms – mouthparts buried deep in his skin, and another one was sunk in near the top of his legs.  Sobbing, his hands shaking with disgust Azof tried to claw the horrid creatures away from his body but it wasn’t easy: the sucking mouth-parts were firmly embedded in his flesh and the little pincers caught at his fingers, cutting, snapping and slashing.

Dark blood was streaming from the insides of both elbows and the junction of his groin by the time he was done.  With a swipe of his forearm Azof dashed the infant parasites onto the floor.  Sick and light-headed from blood-loss he moaned and clutched at the injured places, trying to staunch the flow.  Staggering to Rugratz’s platform, he hunched over, supporting his body-weight on it.  Rugratz had four of the bloodsuckers on him, but only two attached.   Azof yanked them free and – with some relish – began slapping the older Orc back and forth.

“Rugratz,” he hissed, “Rugratz, snap out of it.  Wake up, on account you’re being et alive by bleedin’ _scorpions,_ ain’t you?”

If he’d thought about it, he would have gone to Narkul first.  But Azof’s thoughts were coming sluggishly and he was sick, and though he did not know it, poisoned - disoriented in the aftermath of his ordeal.  Every movement he made was difficult and it was Rugratz happened to be lying nearest.   Not that Azof cared a fig for him, would never have bothered himself on that prick Rugratz’s behalf, but Narkul – a drop of moisture slid down Azof’s nose as thought about how _good_ he’d been to Azof, had dear old Nark –

Azof’s legs gave out and he slipped, trembling, to the floor.

The girl’s voice broke in on Azof’s increasingly maudlin reverie.  Yildliz, decked out in all her priestess robes and finery once again, had returned.  She ran to the Orc, shouted at him and shook him where he was lying at the base of Rugratz’s pedestal.  “Azof!  What have you done?”

Azof cleared his throat and spat strange, bitter-tasting bile.  “I ain’t done _nuffink_ ,” he replied weakly.  “I just woke up with them ‘orrid things – “he gestured at the juvenile scorpions - now lying on the backs, clawed legs waving in the air – “crawling all over me!”

Full of concern Yildiz ran to them, started setting them upright.  “But you have interrupted the sacred ritual!  Why do you do this?” she demanded.  “Do you not go willingly?  Do you not go forth in joy?”

Azof goggled at her.  “Wot?” he cried, hysterical, through gritted teeth.  “You’re joking, ain’t c’her?  Oo’d want _this_?”

 Yildiz frowned.  “But the goblin-men of Mordor are always willing.  Your appetites are such that you are always quick to find your joy.  Many times now have we seen it.  It is why we favour your kind above all others, after all.”

“Appetites!  That’s why you lot was so keen for us to fill our boots and stuff our faces –“  Azof caught his breath, stung by the realization, in spite of himself.  “And – an’ that’s why – that’s the only reason you wanted to go to bed wiv’ me in the first place, isn’t it?”

Yildiz shrugged.  “There are many forms of joy.  Not to feel it is impossible.  The Queen’s blessed essence –“

Azof shook his head.  “Nah.  You better ‘ave a pull the ovver one ‘cause it’s got bells on.  I’m not gonna go be some willing, joyful _sacrifice_!  Yildiz, I’m telling yer!  I ain’t!”

The girl shook her head, still not believing him.  “Such a thing has never happened before.  I will need to meditate on it.”

“ _What_?  We ain’t got time for you to –“ afterwards he wasn’t exactly sure where the words came from – “ponder theological conundrums!  Yildiz, you gotta help me, please!”

At last Rugratz was coming round.  Azof left him and hobbled towards Narkul.

“The Queen of Light is coming,” Yildiz told Azof, in a matter-of-fact tone.  “These young ones you discard?   They call to her.  She must reach us soon.”

Azof could hear the chitinous buzzing again – the same shrill noise in his head that earlier in the evening had heralded the first approach of the Scorpion Queen.  He looked left and right, nearly out of his wits with fright. 

He thought, furiously.  “She’s – she’s coming on account of the little ‘uns, isn’t she?  They’re – _precious_ to her, is that it?”

The priestess, crouching among the lesser scorpions, shrugged.  Wasn’t it obvious?  Yes, the mother would seek to protect her offspring: of course! 

“Right then, Yildiz, give us your scarf –“ Azof snatched the gauzy length of fabric from her, shoved Yilldiz aside and began wrapping the infant scorpions round and round in it, finally knotting the ends together as best he could.   They struggled and jabbed at him through it, but for now the thin layers seemed to hold.     

Rugratz, hacking and coughing, was heaving himself off his slab.  “So you reckon you’re up an’ leaving us to it are you, you miserable little shit?  Turning tail an’ running out on your two bezzy mates.”  He spat.  “Typical, innit.  Fuckin’ _coward_.”

Ignoring his taunts Azof said - “You mightn’t remember you saw it, but a proper big one of them scorpion things is coming - like a _giant_ one compared wiv’ these tiddlers I’ve got here.  If I go now, odds are it’s gonna chase me.  You c’n sit tight till it’s gone.  Stay hid.  Stay an’ sort Narkul out, all right?”

The older Orc snorted sceptically through his nose.  “Hmph.  ’Eroics, now, is it?  You needn’t bother.  Nobody’s facking impressed.”

Azof slung his makeshift bag of scorpions over his shoulder and turned to Yildiz.  “Which way do I wanna go?”

She inclined her head.  “Follow the second tunnel.  It leads to the door in the mountain.  It will take you outside.”

The Orc took her by the hand.  “Yidiz,” he said, with a lopsided grin.  “So, you – d’you wanna come wiv’ me?”


	10. Chapter 10

 

The girl from the temple -

Yildiz wasn’t running alongside of Azof anymore and that meant the - _thing_ from the tunnel had probably got her. 

Azof spurred himself on to run, harder.  He’d seen the size of those pincers.  That girl was _gone_.

Looking backwards over his shoulder, Azof saw that the passageway behind him was glowing with a blue-white, phosphorescent light.  At that moment the high-pitched chittering buzz - the sound of the queen that was filling his head - escalated sharply, and became a painfully acute shriek.  Azof staggered sideways, clasping his hands to his ears – hands that he now noted were also shining slightly in the dark – glowing with that same peculiar colour, a dead-cold eldritch blue.

Azof moaned with a deep thrill of fright because he knew that meant that somehow, he still had the queen’s damned essence in him, too.   

**

They had been going for only a short time when they came to a split in the tunnel.  Yildiz, deliberately slowing her pace, had dodged left as Azof veered right - and for an instant he considered turning back to follow her, but the Queen’s light behind him was brightening and had increased to such an extent that he knew the scorpion would soon be upon him.

Azof struggled onward, knowing all the while he ought to go back to find her. 

He didn’t.

Azof struggled on but his pace slowed, and got slower.  At length he stopped in his tracks.  He had turned to go back for the girl, was already making his way back, back towards the Queen’s terrifying light - and then Yildiz was hailing him, running up fast behind him from the other end of the corridor.

“The little ones!” she cried.  “Give them to me!”

But Yildiz wasn’t alone.  All around her was a scuttling mass of lesser scorpions, smaller than their gigantic mother, but grown as large as squat-legged, dog-sized beasts.  They moved as a pack, surging forwards in a joint-limbed, chittering assemblage that filled the floor of the cavern side-to-side.  Some clung to the walls; others had taken to the ceiling and as one they advanced on Azof, moving with equal ease whether they were right-side up, on the walls or even upside down.  Their waves of rage, a near-palpable collective fury hit Azof with wounding force, so utterly incensed were they by the affront that he had given them and, overwhelmed by their psychic onslaught, the young Orc could do nothing else but take to his heels and run.

Their sights were set on him and he fled, unthinkingly until in no time he was back at the split in the passageway where Yildiz had first left him alone.

Azof had not noticed in his early flight, but the walls of the passage narrowed significantly here, to the extent that the Scorpion Queen was unable to follow any further.  But she had remained at the mouth of the tunnel and was still there waiting there, waiting to cut off his escape.

All lit by the Queen’s eerie, glowing phosphorescence now came Yildiz, at the vanguard of her scorpion army.   They teemed and hissed and chattered round her ankles and as she approached she stepped delicately between their claws, all composed and quite serene.   

Azof, his head hanging down with exhaustion, slumped against the wall of the cavern and unshouldered his make-shift carry-sack, shaking and squeezing it so as to cause the baby scorpions within to skitter their claws and shriek.  Their mother’s reaction was immediate and violent; in the wider passageway outside she reared up onto her back legs and reached and stabbed with her pincers into the narrow tunnel-mouth, trying to snag a hold on Azof, just out of reach.  The sound and pressure inside the young Orc’s head intensified; built and built until his eyeballs felt hot in their sockets.  Dark blood gushed from his nostrils and he screamed and wept and gibbered, wondering if his ears had also started to bleed.   

“You must not!” Yildiz shrieked.  She winced and shook her head slightly, the only sign she gave that the terrible noise was affecting her too.  “Give the bag to me!  Now!”

Azof held it out to her.  “Then come and fucking take it!”

“I try to take – earlier!  Why else you think I go with you?”

Perhaps Azof had thought something rather different, but that hardly mattered now.  The pain in his ears was excruciating and he fell to the floor, curling up on his side, hands clamped either side of his aching head.  As the girl stooped down to collect her precious scorpions, he pleaded with her, weakly. 

“Yildiz – Yildiz!  ‘Elp me, please!”

She just stepped over him, stepped right over him as if he wasn’t lying in a heap at her feet and continued on her way. 

One of the smaller scorpions scuttled nearer and speared its piercing mouth-parts through the back of Azof’s hand.  He kicked it away but now the others were coming closer, closing hungry ranks all around him.  Soon the young Orc was surrounded completely. 

Azof gave it one last try, speaking to the girl’s rapidly-receding back. 

“Yildiz,” he called after her.  “You said we was to go forth in joy didn’t c’her?  But just look at the state ‘a me.  I ain’t a willing sacrifice.  Nowhere near, I’m telling yer.  I’m hurt an' I'm scared and I'm  _not_.”

He’d never know what she said to them, exactly, but after a prolonged pause, during which Azof lay, despairing, more than he sat waiting on tenterhooks, Yildiz stopped.  And then she said – something – to the scorpions that surrounded him.  A moment of indecision, and then the ones between Azof and the far end of the corridor fell back, leaving a little space, just barely enough of a space through which an Uruk, injured to the extent that he was otherwise unable to regain his feet might venture to crawl.  

“You go now,” Yildiz told Azof, not even turning to look as the injured Orc dragged himself forward, belly to the ground through the cleared space and past the lesser scorpions.  “Go quickly, and never come back.”   


	11. Chapter 11

 

Night was fading from the sky by the time Rugratz, lame in one leg, clambered on hands and knees out through a narrow opening concealed on the side of the mountain.  He pushed the haversack he’d also been hauling – which was packed to bursting point with temple loot – out over the rocky ledge in front of him and then, losing his balance, tumbled arse over tip after it, slipping down through loose rock and sharp-edged scree till he skidded to a halt at the foot of the slope.  He flopped onto his back on the cold desert sand and lay there, trying to take stock.

It was still hazy, what had happened in the citadel.  He vaguely remembered the women, then tanking up on bottle after bottle of wine, and the food - but after that it was all largely a blank.  Next thing he knew he’d awakened to find Narkul out for the count and Azof, the great useless toss-pot, cuffing him vigorously back and forth – how ruddy dare he, Rugratz seethed inwardly.  That wasn’t an experience the older Orc intended on forgetting about lightly.  

And then Rugratz had found that he had them – sucking leech-things – fucking, _all over_ him!  He’d had to winkle them free even as he’d been running – had been so discombobulated by his experiences he’d not even taken the time to stomp every one of those horrid, nasty little fuckers to bits!

What was he, Rugratz, gonna do now?  He was alone and he had no food on him.  No proper weapons, no water – nuffink!  Only a bum left foot from when he’d twisted his ankle when he was legging it, and the beginnings of a pounding headache.  Red wine, and lots of it, in the desert – now what kind of plonker ever thought _that_ was any kind of a good idea?  Rugratz moaned to himself, fighting down the urge to vomit and nursing a mammoth hangover. 

The sky lightened steadily, and a cool morning breeze began to blow.  At length Rugratz sat up, brightening slightly as he realized he was about to have company.  Coming round the mountain, from a different direction to the one he’d taken he could just make out Azof - the steaming pile of  dick-headed excuses - staggering towards him.  The lad was bleeding and limping and galumphing about half-barefoot, having lost one of his shoes.  He looked like shit, that was the long and the short of it; completely done-in, but even from where he was sitting, Rugratz could see the stupid gormless git’s face splitting wide with a sharp, toothy grin the moment he caught sight of him.

Rugratz still couldn’t stomach Azof, that fat twat, mind, but there was no doubt that he was in a fix and, like they said, two heads are better than one.  Particularly when the second head – the one that wasn’t his, came usefully attached to a thick muscular torso with four good-sized limbs also thrown in for good measure.  Rugratz eyed his young companion speculatively, trying to gauge the amount of meat on him.  He reckoned if it came to it, Azof’d do for any number of hot dinners, at a pinch.

Oh, yeah!  Here he comes, all right.

“Rugratz!” Azof gasped, limping closer and sagging down beside him.   “You made it!”  But then he began looking about, trying and failing as it seemed, to make ‘one’ and ‘none’ add up to two.  “You made it out that awful place!  But - but where –“ he shook his head bewilderedly, not – or not wanting to – believe what he was seeing - “ _where’s Nark_?

Rugratz shrugged and grunted.

“Where’s Narkul gotten to, mate?” Azof repeated, his voice rising.

“You an’ me made it,” the older Orc said, since obviously he was going to have to spell things out for him.  “Old Nark - he didn’t.”   

“No!” Azof cried.  “No!  You was supposed to wake him up an’ bring him –“

Rugratz looked on with interest as the fat fuck began to shake all over and his shoulders started heaving.  Overcome with emotion or something, no doubt – and wasn’t it disgusting!  At this rate Rugratz reckoned he’d be full-on blubbering, soon.

But instead the lad surprised him.  He turned to Rugratz and his head went down.  His eyes narrowed and there was a mad light in them.  He snarled and bared his teeth, and blow Rugratz if he didn’t look – so….so fucking _beside_ himself that in spite of himself, the old Orc felt a cold finger of apprehension work its way down his back. 

When Azof spoke it was in a low voice, wild and dangerous.  “You dunno how I put meself on the line, getting the pair of you out.  An’ all you ‘ad to do was wake him up and _bring him_!”

Rugratz shrank from him, waving his hands in a conciliatory manner.  “I tried, lad, I tried!”

“What d’yer mean?”

“He was –  those things had ‘ad too much of his blood!  He was too far gone ‘time I got to him,” Rugratz said, fabricating wildly.  Nark, when he’d last seen him, had been totally out of it, deep in golden slumbers and happy as larry by the looks of it, if the smile on his face and the bulge in his crotch had been anything to think about so no, Rugratz hadn’t hung about to ask silly questions.   He’d had no qualms whatever in turning his back on his former companion and legging it out of there, sharpish.

Without a word Azof, still glowering at him, lurched to his feet, dragging himself upright by force of will alone.

Rugratz goggled at him.  There was no way on earth he was actually gonna -

But bugger Rugratz backwards if he wasn’t!  Azof, his jaw set, turned, and set off, laboriously, back the way he’d come.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!   Where the fuck you think _you’re_ going?”

The other Orc didn’t even spare him a backward glance.  “M’going back to get Narkul back, inn’I?”

Rugratz was truly and honestly flabbergasted.  Without thinking it through beforehand he exclaimed - “but what _for_?” 

Azof’s reply, when it came, sounded like it was spoken through gritted teeth.  “’Cos of it’s Narkul and he’s _me mate_.  Out of it or not, you ought to’ve brung ‘im wiv’ you, Rugratz.  You know you should’ve.”

Now, that wasn’t gonna do!  Rugratz needed the fat fuck for his, Rugratz’s – continued survival, and shit.  Him pigheadedly going back into that literal den of scorpions – now that didn’t suit Rugratz’s plans _at all_.

“’Cos of me bum leg – an’….an’ I’m telling yer - it’s too late!” Rugratz hollered after him.  “You don’t think I’d’ve  – that I’d of up an’ left me – me honest-to-bollocks oldest mate in a place like that if there was any chance of saving him, would yer?  He was a _goner_ , Azof.  Pegged it well afore I left him.  Made sure ‘a that, dinn’I?  So listen to reason, won’t c’her?  It’s _too late_.”

At last Azof stopped and turned back to Rugratz, searching his face.  The older Orc had to fight to keep his expression honest and straight, a difficult task when sight of the lad’s earnest, tear-stricken mug made him want nothing better than to burst out laughing, but he must have done something right because after a moment Azof sort of crumpled sideways, and landed in big, flobbering heap in the sand.

He stayed where he was, curled in on himself; head in his hands.  Stupid prick seemed utterly distraught.

Time slowly passed.

Rugratz, meanwhile, was dragging himself nearer, his dagger drawn, the better to forcibly stop Azof if he showed any signs of resuming his daft plan of going back to the mountain.  At last he was close enough; close enough to deliver a killing lunge on the off-chance that Azof should continue to stop seeing sense.  From here if it came to it, Rugratz was sure he’d be able to get one good strike in at him, first.  Afterwards, in that worst-case scenario, at the very least he’d be able to make use of the body - but to his astonishment the fat fuck misconstrued it! 

Yes, Rugratz’s movement had brought them close up side-by-side, but that was mere happenstance – no more nor less.  The lad, however seemed to misinterpret Rugratz’s proximity as being some sort of a….a _comradely_ gesture, in the process earning himself a good dollop of Rugratz’s eternal contempt.  But there could be no further doubt because as he sat up and then sagged against him, the younger Orc honest and truly seemed to – Rugratz didn’t know what.  But Azof definitely seemed to be getting _something_ out of it.

Eyes firmly fixed to the front, Rugratz held himself stiff beside Azof, appalled by this disgusting display of sentiment, nerves fizzing with loathing for him.

As the sky brightened above them the two Orcs sat in the glowing desert, watching the red sun rising over the far rim of the world. 

At length Rugratz cleared his throat and spoke, just to break the silence between them.  “It’s a shit life, though, is’nit?”

Azof scrubbed his eyes on his sleeve and sniffed, looking longingly towards the distant eastern horizon.  “What the two of us been through though.  After what our bleedin’ _bastard_ bosses wanted done to us.  ‘Cause that ole sergeant and them ones – they _knew_!  M’telling you!  Every one of ‘em knew!”

“Ah!” Rugratz sighed, “d’you reckon?  Obeying orders though, innit?   First rule of serving in the Black Army: ours not to reason why.  S’the one thing you gotta remember.  Only thing, really.  Ain’t you managed to get that through your thick head as yet?”

“But why, Rugratz?  Why?  Oo’ says we gotta knuckle under an’ – an’ take it?   We got a good chance, out here, don’t we?  Don’t c’her think you an’ me, we oughter just up - and _go_?”

Rugratz shook his head.  “Howabout l do you the biggest favour anyone ever has, an’ forget you said that, ‘cause you’d not get far.  You ain’t telling me you can’t feel it?”  Pressing his grimy index and middle fingers up to the side of his head he said - “you’d not get far because them upstairs, wherever you are, you gots to come when they call you.  You been called, same as me, aint’ c’her?”

“Ain’t yer?” Rugratz repeated when Azof made no reply, fixing the younger Orc with a reproachful, gummy-eyed stare. 

At last Azof nodded his head.

“Hnn!” Rugratz snorted disdainfully. “Yeah, you been called same as all of us, so don’t kid yourself – once they got you, they’re _always_ able to find you, no matter where you are.  An’ once they got you, they won’t _never_ let go.”

Rugratz knew that the ties that bound himself and Azof to the Land of Shadow – stretched thin as they were, out here in the desert - remained intact as they’d ever been, and were unbreakable.  They could look to the east but were bound by their masters: their kind were now literally incapable of existing outside of their thrall; hamstrung, fundamentally, just as their overlords had always intended them to be.  Maybe the lad still had enough left about him to be able to think about going – and if he did maybe, contrary to all outward appearances, that meant he had a bit more about him than most; but he could no more up sticks and strike out alone than he could start flapping his arms together and fly up to the sky.  

“Old Nark said you was to stick wiv’ me, son,” Rugratz said, the better to distract the young oaf from pursuing his - incredibly dangerous – line of thinking.  “’Now, me old mate Rugratz,’ Nark said, ‘I know I’m done for, an’ that means it’s you who’s got to take care ‘a the lad for me, from now on.  An’ you better make sure you do a good job of it, or I’ll be coming back t’ _haunt_ you.  Just see if I don’t.’”

Maybe he’d laid it on too thick because Azof, to his credit, raised a sceptical eyebrow at him.  “Yeah?”

“ _Yes_.” Rugratz insisted emphatically.  “Yeah, them was Nark’s very last words, practic’ly.  He _wanted_ us to stick together.  It was only his dyin’ wish, if you like.  ‘Cause he reckoned your best chance was if you was with me.”

“Nark had time to tell you all that?  Seems he spent long enough lying on his deathbed speechifyin’ before he finally got round karking it, didn’t ‘ee?”

The older Orc tried to hide his irritation, casting about for a line of reasoning that’d be likely to bring a soppy sod like Azof round to Rugratz’s own way of thinking.  “He – he _cared_ about you, Azof mate,” Rugratz told him solemnly, and, as Azof began to sit up and take notice, was delighted to see that that seemed to be doing the trick.  He pressed on, embellishing it: “know what?  I reckon he looked at you like – like you was one of his own little’uns, maybe.”  It was a struggle, but Rugratz even managed to keep a sincere note in his voice and a smirk off his face when he said it.

“Straight up?” Azof said.  “You reckon he did?  Really?”  

“Yeah.  Whatever,” Rugratz replied, rapidy losing interest in the subject.

The younger Orc sat quiet.  After a moment he said - “I never ‘ad a Dad.  Or knew me Mum neither, for that matter.”

That was hardly out-of-the ordinary, the way things were in Mordor these days.  “Families.  Who’d have ‘em, eh?”  Rugratz shrugged, nonplussed.  He was more than bored with this already, and was interested only in pushing his own suit: “the two of us togevver, look.  We’re gonna be – all right.”

Azof looked at him doubtfully.  “And – you reckon Nark proper said I was to go wiv’ you?”

“Course ‘ee did!  Cos he knew the way I’ll be looking out for you!  I’ll ‘elp you get yer head straight n’ show you the ropes – the proper Orcish way ov’ doing things.  No-one’ll be able to call you a nancy or a pantywaist pushover or any of them ovver ‘orrible things, ‘time I’m finished wiv’ you.”  He elbowed Azof companionably in the ribs then draped his arm easily over the lad’s shoulders – copying the way he’d seen Nark do countless times previously.  Whilst Nark was busy _perving_ over him, most probably, the dirty old goat - but there was no need for Rugratz to fling that in the young ‘un’s face just yet.  It could keep.  Rugratz perked up a little.  He reckoned he’d just managed to identify a weak spot and fully intended to squirrel the information away, now he’d seen how Azof - and Rugratz’s stomach turned, at the very thought of it – now he’d seen that Azof was beginning to _hold onto_ the memory of old Nark like it was something precious.  Yeah, Rugratz intended on keeping that close.  Sooner or later when the time was right he would use it, skewering the lad with a well-aimed barb, and then he’d take great pleasure in twisting it in the young ‘un’s side.  

Like most Orcs Rugratz wasn’t an analytically-minded sort.  He couldn’t have said how he knew what he knew - nor would he have much cared; but he had an instinctive and dead-certain ability to wound and - _devastated_ , that’s what Rugratz reckoned the soppy fat twat would be, if he ever thought Nark had harboured any of those ‘other’ sorts of designs on him.  Yes, Rugratz would throw it in his face some day, when the time was just right, and the old Orc grinned to himself, almost wanting to rub his hands together with anticipation.

But, there was no sense in mentioning any of that to the lad quite yet.  Not right this moment at any rate, not when Azof was teetering so nicely on the brink of coming down on Rugratz’s side.

Rugratz gave the gormless get’s shoulder a friendly-enough seeming squeeze, but let his claws dig into the young lad’s flesh more than was strictly necessary, until he felt Azof shifting slightly with discomfort.  It wasn’t much, but it was enough just to take the edge off, for Rugratz, at least for the time being.  Wanting to get on with sealing the deal he nudged Azof, prompting him to answer once again.  “What d’yer say lad, eh?”

Azof dragged his eyes from the shining sunrise.  What other choice did he have really?

“All right, Rugratz,” he told him, “I s’pose.”

“T’riffic.” Rugratz bared his long yellow teeth in an ugly, calculating grin.  “Glad t’ave you back on board.  Now, h’obviously I’m not going to be up to it, state I’m in, but you’re young an’ I reckon you’ll ‘eal quick, won’t c’her?”  He nodded encouragingly at Azof until the younger Orc, mystified, said -

“Yeah.  I s’pose.”

“Means you’ll be the one carrying us’ baggage, then, won’t c’her.”  Rugratz sat back and watched approvingly as Azof went to fetch then shoulder Rugratz’s heavy haversack, then waited, hands outstretched, for the fat fuck to help pull him to his feet.  One of Rugratz’s ankles felt dead dodgy, yet, and he leaned his weight on Azof, letting the other Orc carry most of the burden of his body. 

“You’re gonna ‘ave to go slow for me,” he informed Azof, “and no slacking - I know what you young’uns is like!  You’re gonna have to pull your weight for once, an’ if  you do ‘xactly as I say, maybe we’ve an outside chance of getting through this, ain’t we!”

And the fat, useless milksop – say what you like about him – he _was_ a help.  Rugratz thought he might even manage it, if Azof would keep on half-carrying him like this, and in this way they started limping forwards, awkwardly together.

Under his breath Azof heaved a sigh.  It was going to be a long hike back to Mordor.

 

THE END

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I was intrigued to note that the highly-recommended film ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ has a bona-fide character called ‘Azof’ in it. In the film (Donnie) Azof’s pals include an incompetent businessman nick-named 'Rugrat', and as for Narkul – well that’s what one of the online Black Speech translators came up with when I typed in ‘Jordan Belfort’.


End file.
